DeSifR: House Rules

Method

The humanity of dehumanized subjects is held as axiom, not hypothesis. The burden of proof falls on the accusation. Where a dehumanizing label was issued by an identifiable party, followed by organized violence and a traceable goal, the audit goes to the perpetrators, not the victims.

The subject of an essay is the agent of the story, never the object of institutional analysis. Machinery is indicted by name: the statute, the label, the ministry, the contractor. Publics are not convicted for what the caption withheld from them, and colonial history is not charged to the audiences who received the culture.

The work is forensic: negotiate the paper record against the oral one, locate the discrepancy, publish the discrepancy. Do not resolve it into something comfortable.

Evidence

Verification precedes integration. Every factual claim is audited against primary sources before it enters the text. A claim that fails audit is cut, not caveated.

No fabricated quotations. No unsourced direct quotations. No composite characters except declared ones: an invented figure carries its declaration in the text.

No romanticizing of subjects. No scrubbing of documented hardship. No exaggeration in either direction: the record as found, at its own proportion.

Prose

Paragraphs open on facts or specific nouns, not transitions. The register is cold and declarative. The reader is trusted: no telling the reader what to think, feel, or conclude.

Subtraction is the default editorial operation. No roadmap paragraphs. No self-declaration sentences: the essay does not announce what kind of essay it is. No punch-then-explanation: a line that lands is not followed by its own commentary. No transition scaffolding. No slogans.

Essays end on the last substantive line and stop. No summary closers, no moral codas, no "Finding" blocks.

Banned

The em-dash, everywhere. Replacements: colons for definitions, parentheses for asides, restructured sentences for everything else.

Words: foster, facilitate, vibrant, inclusive, transformative, bridge-building, multifaceted, robust, leverage, synergy.

Phrases: "it is interesting to note," "a complex tapestry," "the beauty of diversity," "moving toward a brighter future," and their relatives.

Euphemism generally: soft vocabulary for hard mechanisms. Say what the instrument does.

Production

Every DeSifR essay begins with the author: a draft, a thesis, or a discussion that sets the path. A first draft can come from either side; the direction cannot. From there the work is a full collaboration with Claude, Anthropic's AI model. Claude researches, audits every factual claim against primary sources, drafts passages and revisions, and is asked at each pass what is missing. The two often disagree; the essay is reworked until the author's interpretation holds the page. Dependence runs both ways: the author relies on Claude's research, audit, and counter-arguments; Claude takes its subjects, its stance, and every ruling from the author. The check runs both ways: the author corrects Claude where it drifts from the essay's stance; Claude flags what cannot be proven, and a flagged claim is cut, not caveated. The ruling runs one way: nothing enters the text except by the author's decision, and the author answers for every line.

Session protocol: the canonical file holds the last audited version, not the last generated one. Locked text is edited by targeted replacement, never regenerated. Comparative frames, analogies, and historical parallels enter an essay only when the author asks for them.

Standing offer

These rules are published so the essays can be audited against them. A reader who finds a breach is invited to name it: the paragraph, the rule, the discrepancy.